Antonia smiled grimly. Really, Domenica was the end. Had we had a tennis court then we should have played! Domenica was not unlike that Jane Austen character who announced that if she had learned to play the piano then she would undoubtedly have been rather good at it. Well, if this was the way Domenica wanted it to be, then she would not flinch from the prospect. If there was to be a direct battle for the attentions of Angus, then she, Antonia, had an advantage that no amount of clever verbal play on Domenica’s part would be able to deal with: she was younger than her. That brute fact gave her an inestimable advantage; she was younger, and any man was bound to be more interested in a younger women – that was how men were. They might pretend it to be otherwise, but such claims would ultimately always be shown to be hollow; Angus would be no exception.

They continued with their drive until at last they saw the small hill town of Sant’ Angelo in Colle rise up from the plains. They were still some distance away when they saw it, and it was faded and attenuated in hazy outline, almost unreal, like a backdrop painted by an artist whose palette runs only to gentle shades of blue.

‘That’s where we’re going,’ said Domenica. ‘See? Over there.’

Antonia and Angus were silent. The sight of such beauty can make us quiet with fear; fear that it might not be real, fear that it might be taken from us, as is everything that we love, that is only on loan to us.

66. Pacta Sunt Servanda

The return of Irene proved to be a low-key affair. On the day of her repatriation, Stuart took Bertie to school on the 23 bus and assured him that his mother would be there to collect him at the end of the school day. And indeed she was – as Bertie made his way to the school gate he saw Irene talking in an animated way to a small knot of raptly attentive parents, describing to them, he imagined, her remarkable ordeal.

‘There’s your mother, Bertie,’ said Olive as they approached the gate. ‘Nobody thought they’d see her again, but she’s back. My dad says it’s a great pity.’

Bertie frowned. ‘What’s a great pity?’

‘That your mum was taken away in a container,’ said Olive. ‘Or I think that was what he meant. Of course he might have meant that it’s a pity she’s come back. I’ve got no way of telling. But that’s what he said.’

They returned to the flat on the bus.

‘I was worried about you, Mummy,’ said Bertie.